Currently, a terminal with a touch screen, such as a touch handset or a personal digital assistant (PDA), is typically not provided with physical keys. All operations are achieved by touching the touch screen using a gesture. As an example, for an existing touch handset, its touch screen generally displays a longitudinal screen and a user performs touch operations in a longitudinal-screen states. For example, the user's finger can slide on the touch screen towards left, indicating an operational instruction of “return”. Then, a processor within the handset can execute the return instruction in response to the touch instruction, so as to output a display interface after the return operation.
From the research of the prior art, the inventors make the following findings. The touch screen of a touch terminal typically displays a longitudinal screen. When the user rotates the terminal to display a lateral screen, the display interface is switched to a display output interface in a lateral-screen state. However, in the prior art, while the display output interface of the touch terminal can be switched between the lateral-screen state and the longitudinal-screen state, the touch gestures cannot be switched as the state of screen changes. In the above example where the user's finger slides on the touch screen towards left, if the touch screen is switched from lateral to longitudinal, then the user needs to switch his/her finger action from sliding towards left to sliding downwards to achieve the operational instruction of “return”. In other words, according to the prior art, the user needs to remember touch gestures for different states if the displaying state of the touch screen changes between different states. Since there is no uniform operation gesture for the same operational instruction, the user experience is deteriorated.